Jimmy Kimmel is a Bully

Dave Sussman

Oct 5, 2017

The latest spearhead for the “reasonable” Left’s response to Las Vegas has been found in the heartfelt, but factually false monologues from Jimmy Kimmel. Now, unlike many on the Right, I don’t harbor a dislike of the man himself. He seems a decent fellow and brought one of better libertarian-leaning minds to us, Adam Carolla. I no longer watch Kimmel, or any late-night comedians for that matter, as they continually find joy in insulting me while their barking seal audience lauds their vitriolic approval with enthused applause. Why would anyone want to be attacked before going to sleep by a supposed moral authority?

Back in his youth, Kimmel said he wanted to be David Letterman. For the same reason, I didn’t watch the not-so-funny Letterman at the end of his career either. However, just because we don’t watch him, we still can’t escape his political prolix. His rants are being replayed everywhere. Kimmel is affable and sympathetic, and many of us can envision being friends with him outside of the political debate. But he is currently being a bully. A great big, ignorant bully. In fact, he is the most dangerous kind of bully. Since he elicits empathy from a great number of people, he is elevated as a voice of reason and is now being used by the left to carpet-bomb their enemies, us.

He taps into our raw emotion, confusion, fears, and anger when we are most vulnerable. He sounds moderated in his views and effectively lectures us on his “facts,” which sound like common sense. If you throw out everything you know, whether it’s on healthcare or gun rights, Kimmel seems wise, truthful, and tearful, therefore those who he has determined are on the other side of his “truth” must be ignorant, hateful, and/or evil. I won’t get into numerous details why Kimmel is factually wrong on the gun rights debate, but recommend watching the always thorough Ben Shapiro who covers it here.

Why is Kimmel a bully? Normal people (those of us not screaming at each other on Twitter for hours on end) wake up each day, head to work, take the kids to school and come home exhausted only to rinse and repeat. Every few weeks we come up for air only to remark “how did we get to October already?” Most don’t follow the minute-to-minute outrage machine from both the left and right and correctly consider the incessant anger as cancerous. Also, there are shades of gray. It’s confusing to know what’s what. Yes, CNN may hate Trump, but didn’t Trump say what he said?

Confusion, which many would say is by design, stops most from intellectually understanding the deeper issues. Therefore, emotion trumps truth. Reading an article deep in the interweb why Kimmel is wrong does not get the eyeballs that Kimmel gets when demonstrating his tormented heart on his sleeve. And thus Kimmel has been elevated to be the moral authority on this issue and tells us because we vote for conservatives “your thoughts and prayers are insufficient.” Shapiro asks “who died and made Kimmel God? Who made you the great moral arbiter of our time?”

Many of our families and friends get much of their political marching queues from empathetic entertainers, enlightened late-night “comedians,” and those unbiased “journalists” who make up the mainstream media. When Las Vegas happens, it pierces our protective bubble, which many have fortified against the shrill politics of our day.

None of us can understand how someone could intentionally kill and hurt so many innocents, and as we look for answers, the enlightened ones immediately turn evil into a political “I told you so” moment.

We cringe and think to ourselves, well, that’s just the extremists on the left — those Twitter crazies who spend their days screaming at each other while the rest of us try to make ends meet. For example, within minutes of reports of the Las Vegas massacre, we get teachers vomiting their hatred into the ether. (She since deleted her account) .

The Pulse Night Club massacre, until Sunday night, the worst mass shooting in the United States, brought out advocates of the LGBTQIAA (did I miss anyone?) community who immediately blamed the right for the evil perpetrated by a “radicalized Muslim lone wolf.” Here was an ACLU Lawyer’s take:

The Left wants to preach empathy. But they will only accept complete submission by their perceived political enemies. As we learn who the Las Vegas killer was and what psychosis propelled him to slaughter so many innocents, the left is once again falling into the trap of assuming they can bully their fellow Americans into acquiescence. It’s a formula that has only lead to the disintegration of national dialogue, balkanize our country and, if it continues, will likely lead to their greatest nightmare of all, the re-election of President Trump.